"Conversational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his collar; he walked in, and it was only after a careful second look that I recognized in our visitor the redoubtable "desperado." Evans courteously pressed him to stay and dine with us, and not only did he show the most singular conversational dexterity in talking with the stranger, who was a very well-informed man, and had seen a great deal of the world, but, though he lives and eats like a savage, his manners and way of eating were as refined as possible. I notice that Evans ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... rejected as well as the rustic phrase or that borrowed from the language of common life, and more especially the Greek words and phrases which, as the letters of this period show, had to a very great extent found their way into conversational language. Nevertheless this scholastic and artificial classicism of the Ciceronian period stood to the Scipionic as repentance to innocence, or the French of the classicists under Napoleon to the model French of Moliere and Boileau; while the former classicism ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... used to spend a Sunday afternoon with the Carlyles at their modest home in Chelsea. At such times Jeannie Welsh would usually manage to pilot the conversational craft along smooth waters; but if she were not present, hot arguments would follow, and finally a point would be reached where Carlyle and Spencer would simply sit and glare ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... had turned his face away from her again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim turned down, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... jersey lounged on to the quay at this point of his meditations, and, old habit asserting itself, Merefleet greeted him with a remark on the weather. The man halted in front of him in a conversational attitude. Merefleet knew the position well. It came back to him on a flood of memory. He could not believe that it was twenty years since he had talked with such ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... incredible as that "one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint." The remark of Herschel's, quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page 241, that the "Origin" illustrates the "law of higgledy-piggledy," is probably a conversational variant of the Laputan comparison which gave rise to the passage in the "Descent of Man" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... recent adventures. If people meet in society, they must be civil; and if old friends meet at a dance, there is an institution known as "sitting out"; and "sitting out" is nothing if not conversational; and conversation—between old friends and cousins—is ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breeding-ground, and is so common that you can always get a sight of at least twenty birds in an afternoon's walk. Here, too, is the metropolis of the turtledove, and the low sound of its crooning is heard all day in summer, the other most common sound being that of magpies—their subdued, conversational chatter and their solo-singing, the chant or call which a bird will go on repeating for a hundred times. The wonder is how the doves succeed in such a place in hatching any couple of chalk-white eggs, placed on a small platform of sticks, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... average Frenchman or Irishman excels the average Englishman, German or American in courtesy and ease of manner, simply because it is his nature. They are more social and less self-dependent than men of Teutonic origin, more demonstrative and less reticent; they are more communicative, conversational, and freer in their intercourse with each other in all respects; while men of German race are comparatively stiff, reserved, shy and awkward. At the same time, a people may exhibit ease, gayety, and sprightliness of character, and yet possess ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... adroit fencer, and could explain the difference between the French system and the American plan as taught at West Point. I learned both from him. His conversational powers and the extent of his general knowledge surpassed anything that ever graced the border. In a word, he possessed all the qualities, including personal beauty, that were necessary to make him a general favorite with both men ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... responded the conversational anesthetist, as he loosened one of the straps. "Now, take one breath of fresh air—one deep, long ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... met my eye. He winced slightly, but recovered himself, and going to the fence, stood for a few moments on his hands, with his bare feet quivering in the air. Then he turned toward me and threw out a conversational preliminary. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... lady guest spent much of her time on deck—sitting in a deck- chair, within easy conversational range of whichever had the tiller; and she favoured me with her company during the whole of the first watch (it being my eight hours out that night); but she was unusually silent gazing in an absent, dreamy manner for the most ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... faintest idea that—that an accident occurred. Now that I think of it, she did stop me when I undertook to convince her that your bark is worse than your bite, young man,—in other words, that your theories are for conversational and not practical purposes. Yes, she cut me off rather sharply. I hadn't attached any importance to her—See here, Braden," he demanded suddenly, "is there any reason why she should have cut me off like that? Had she cause to feel that you might have put into practice your—your—Come, ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... abruptness with which she dropped their conversation. Gabriel, however, was used to sudden collapses and even to sudden ruptures on the part of those addressed by him, and no man had more the secret of remaining gracefully with his conversational wares on his hands. He saw Mrs. Dallow approach Nick Dormer, who was talking with one of the ladies of the embassy, and apparently signify that she wished to speak to him. He got up and they had a minute's ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Dinsmore was quite remarkable for his conversational powers, and Rose, who had always heretofore found him a most entertaining companion, wondered greatly at his silence on this particular evening. She waited in vain for him to start some topic of conversation, but as he did not seem disposed to do so, she at length made the attempt ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... of their talk had been quite real to Mary. She had betrayed no inattention to him and when it had come her turn to carry on the conversational stream she had done so adequately and even with a certain vivacity. But it had meant no more than an occupation; something that passed the time and held her potential thoughts ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to marry you?" asked Clifford. This idea occurred to him as being conversational, but he ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... went to hear him out of curiosity were swung by his personality into being supporters. He had always his own natural style of talk. Possessing a musical and clear voice, he never strained for effect, rarely used a rotund sentence, but talked to his audiences in a red-hot conversational kind of way, his heightened feelings finding expression in a sibilance which always touched the nerves of his hearers. He seldom interrupted interrupters, finding it more effective to let them speak and then to deal with them in his own ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... off his pads, and dropped into the chair next to Mike's. Mike was silent and thoughtful. He was in after Bob, and to be on the eve of batting does not make one conversational. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... or rather she remembered the name. Great-aunt Jane was one of the relations the Polkingtons did not use; she was not rich enough or obliging enough to give any help, nor grand enough for conversational purposes. She never figured in Mrs. Polkington's talk except vaguely as "one of my husband's people in Norfolk;" this when she was explaining that the Captain came of East Anglian stock on his mother's side. Jane was only a step-aunt to the Captain; his mother had married ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... moustache. So did his aide-de-camp, who seemed to be a man of but little initiative and conversational resource. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... might prove a successful first step in bringing English politics back to the high plane of conversational interest from which ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... in silence after this, for Luke had disburthened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational resources quite barren, and Mr. Tulliver had relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships before him. Maggie noticed that he was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... quite what to answer, since she had been doing neither, but he passed on with the easy air of a man accustomed to fill in conversational gaps. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... a success that result was due partly to Rocco, and partly to Nella. The Prince said little beyond what the ordinary rules of the conversational game demanded. His hostess talked much and talked well, but she failed to rouse her guest. When they had had coffee he took a rather formal ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... went on Ernest. He spoke in a purely conversational tone, but it's surprising how far the human voice will carry at times. Everybody about the place, including the lift-boy and the Belgian waiter, seemed to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... be conversational in form, which is always a most pleasing style for children, as it is the most natural. The work of the teacher is to awaken and stimulate interest, not to impart information. The attention of the child should be directed ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... them," he said, but instead of uttering so simple a piece of information, a reply in which there was so little that could astonish me, in the natural and conversational tone which would have befitted it, he recited it with a separate stress upon each word, leaning forward, bowing his head, with at once the vehemence which a man gives, so as to be believed, to a highly improbable statement (as though the fact that he ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... he did. The idea of a glorious young Woman like Donna swearing was, indeed, perfectly ridiculous. Of course, nerve-racked tired waitresses and be-deviled chefs "cussed each other out" as a regular thing up at the eating-house during a rush, and Donna, having listened to these conversational sparks, off and on, for three years, felt now, for the first time, as she imagined they must feel—that the unusual commotion in one's soul occasionally demands some ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... was not prone to be very diffident of his own conversational powers, but it did seem to him that he was about to tax them almost too far. He hardly knew where to begin, and he hardly knew where ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Having weathered this conversational opening, the stranger from Britain finds himself, as the days of his sojourn increase in number, swept gently but irresistibly into an ocean of talk—an ocean complicated by eddies, cross-currents, and sudden shoals—upon the subject of Anglo-American relations over the War. Here is the ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... manners were cold, and even haughty, in his general intercourse with society; but, with those whom he loved and wished to please, he was gentle and insinuating; and when he chose to open the resources of his highly gifted mind, his conversational talents were more versatile and fascinating, than those of any individual whom I have ever known. There was a cast of deep thought, almost of melancholy, in his countenance, which was ascribed, I know not if correctly, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... conversational-for "La jaram" there is no harm in it, no objection to it, and, sometimes, "it is a matter ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... you imagine, from this extract, that the book from which it was taken would be interesting? Why? Notice the easy conversational way of telling the incident. What is gained by this? Do you sympathize with Pepper or the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... San Mateo, where it appeared the disorganized party had prolonged their visit to accept an invitation to dine with a local magnate, she was pleasantly conversational with the slightly abstracted Grant. She was so sorry to have given them all this trouble and anxiety! Of course she ought to have waited at the fork of the road, but she had never doubted but she could rejoin them presently on the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Merna, I was informed that music is never performed on such occasions as these, during conversational periods, as it is considered a desecration of a high and ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Progress (if that be his correct title) about the pantomime boys of the last four decades. And as the first was his first cousin, the second his second cousin, the third his brother-in-law, and the fourth his uncle by marriage, this conversational versatility certainly served in one sense to create a happy family. But March never seemed to get a glimpse of that domestic interior to which men of the middle classes are accustomed in their friendships, and which is indeed the foundation of friendship and love ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Latin were probably drawn farther apart than the two corresponding forms of speech in English, because Latin writers tried to make the literary tongue as much like Greek in its form as possible, so that literary Latin would naturally have diverged more rapidly and more widely from conversational Latin than formal English has ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... at his new acquaintance's conversational powers. "But I'm a rat in a strange garret here. Nothing doing. Can't get a ship for love ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... admission of Missouri, tended greatly to check recrimination and relieve asperity of feeling. Mr. Holmes was a man of ability, of experience in public affairs, and of eminent distinction at home. With a rare gift of humor, and with conversational talent almost unrivaled, he exerted an influence over men in private and social intercourse which gave him singular power in shaping public questions. He was an intimate friend and political supporter of Mr. Clay, and their cordial co-operation at this crisis evoked harmony from chaos, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... presiding place of honour. It is a very great responsibility to sit in the presiding place of honour. From that conspicuous position one leads the whole table's activities: conversing to the right, laughing to the left, sharply on the lookout for any conversational gap, now and then drawing muted tete-a-tetes into a harmonic unison. She is, as it were, the leader of an orchestra of which the individual diners are the subsidiary instruments. Upon her watchful resourcefulness ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... wind instruments; and the device of double tonguing, the quick repetition of notes by taking a staccato T-stop in blowing, is well known. The flute generally goes with the violins in the orchestra, or sustains long notes with the other wood wind instruments, or is used in those conversational passages with other instruments that lend such a charm to orchestral music. The lower notes are not powerful. Mr. Henry Carte has, however, designed an alto flute in A, descending to violin G, with ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... explanation. Extracted by bits in conversational spirals, it proved to be that he had decided that the carriage needed three horses, which he had known all along; and, chiefly, that he had desired to sleep upon a little scheme for exploiting the strangers. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... bless her gentle little heart, know the meaning of the word. Besides which we haven't told her about the girl, as we are rather looking forward to that first interview, and wondering how Mary will acquit herself in a conversational Waterloo. She can't, you know, make life miserable and information bitter to a German who speaks no English. 'Ja' or 'nein' alternately and interchangeably may baffle even ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... to playfellow's fun in a twinkling. I used as a little fellow to think him larger than he really was, but he was of good size, inclined to be stout; his eyes were grey, rather prominent, and his forehead sloped from arched eyebrows. So conversational were his eyes and brows that he could persuade you to imagine he was carrying on a dialogue without opening his mouth. His voice was charmingly clear; his laughter confident, fresh, catching, the outburst of his very self, as laughter should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... establishment, and lived luxuriously. He had a habit of asking his sitters to dinner; thus he could study their faces and retouch their portraits with the more natural expressions of their conversational hours, for it is rare that one is natural when posing before an artist who is painting one's portrait. But in the midst of his busy life as an artist and his gay life as a man of the world, Sir Anthony did not forget the needs of his brother painters. There was ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... himself sitting beside her. He could not help trembling slightly at first, but he would have giving a great deal if, by some miraculous vision, Mary Kramer and other friends of his in Cranston could have seen him engaged in what he thought of as "conversational badinage" with ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... on her; he was glad that she showed no aversion to Sidney, because, in the event of Horace's marriage, where would Sidney live, if not with Horace and Horace's wife? Still, he could have wished that Ella would continue to display her conversational powers. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... fine genius, a brilliant fancy, and much gracefulness of expression, Weir has decided claims to remembrance. His conversational talents were of a remarkable description, and attracted to his shop many persons of taste, to whom his poetical talents were unknown. He was familiar with the whole of the British poets, and had committed their best passages to memory. Possessing a keen relish ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that this remark of the "Desennuyee" can only apply to second-rate authors, let us examine into the conversational powers of those who are first-rate. And here I can only speak of those whom I have known—there may be many others. Where could you find such conversationists as Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Sir John Malcolm, and many others, who are now gone? And among those in existence, I have but ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... own natural conversational powers, which called out hers. Where? In the street, in the first place, where I was so fortunate as to meet her just as she had dropped one of a number of parcels of herb medicine she was carrying. I had the ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well; the Royal Humane Society would be rooted out like a horde of assassins. Yet we never speculate as to whether the conversational pessimist will strengthen or disorganize society; for we are convinced that ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... reads with inexpressible interest this special remark, put in by way of marginal incidental note, from a practical manufacturing Quaker, whom, as he is anonymous, we will call Friend Prudence. Prudence keeps a thousand workmen; has striven in all ways to attach them to him; has provided conversational soirees; play-grounds, bands of music for the young ones; went even 'the length of buying them a drum:' all which has turned out to be an excellent investment. For a certain person, marked here by a black stroke, whom we shall name Blank, living over the way,—he also keeps somewhere about ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... about what Sir Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the pleasantest kind of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... condemn me to the conversational limits of a mummy, say so in plain Saxon," he retorted. "How can I talk about ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... of his sermon was old-fashioned. Instead of being a learned and closely-reasoned discourse, seasoned with scraps of Latin, or a political essay on the events of the day, it was a sermon such as had been more common in the beginning of the century—simple, almost conversational, striking, and full of Gospel truth. Such a sermon Jenny Lavender had never ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Savoy, who was very fond of listening to stories of an equivocal character. This, it may be pointed out, is one of the reasons why the commentators of the Heptameron suppose her to be Oisille, though the latter in the conversational passages following the tales displays considerable prudery and devoutness. That Louise was a woman of extremely amorous tendency is well known; we need, indeed, no better proof of it than her unseemly passion ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... forming in instant unmeasured speech. "Not for myself," he particularized. "You could have seven mistresses, of all colors, if the place were mine. Please remember that it isn't. It's the company's. That is quite different." Daniel was making, Lee realized, what for him was a tremendous conversational effort. "Even if I were alone, except for Cubans, it would be possible; but there is Mr. Stribling, with his wife and, at present, grown daughter, from Utica; he is the Assistant Administrador. Then we have George Vincent and Katharine—the Chief Engineer ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... spry and conversational gentleman who looked like an Englishman, but was of the type commonly denominated in our own land as breezy. So he could not have been an Englishman. Once in a while there comes along an Englishman who is windy, and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... man of definite conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one's importance even to oneself. They had no common conversational small change. They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they exchanged them trivially. It was no serious commerce. Perhaps she had not much of that coin. Nothing significant came from her. It could not be said that she had received from ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... great many. Still, as he grew older, he evinced more and more dislike of everything in the shape of exaggeration. He clothed his ideas with a thousand delicate shades of expression, and never pronounced an opinion without all sorts of reservations. These conversational habits, natural to a finely trained mind, used greatly to irritate the dry, terse old aristocrat, who was never in the least disarmed by the moderation of an adversary—quite the contrary! I always foresaw one danger. That danger was Bonaparte. My father had not ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... gloom, and a party silent and thumb-twisting, instead of gayly conversing, as it should be; so long as people do not come together easily—it is manifestly proper that the hostess should put her finger on the social pendulum, and give it a swing to start the conversational clock. All well-bred people recognize the propriety of speaking to even an enemy at a dinner-party, although they would suffer no recognition an hour later. The same principle holds good, of course, if, in the true exercise of her hospitality, the hostess should introduce some person ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... come down to Carlyle, and see what he says of Coleridge. We need not take those conversational utterances which called down the wrath of Mr. Swinburne, and found expression in an epigram which violates all the proprieties of literary language. Look at the full-length portrait in the Life of Sterling. Each oracle denies his predecessor, each ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... fell upon them, broken only by the regular plash of the oars. In the young man's conversational attacks there had been nothing but a light play of sunny humour, but in this last retort of hers there was something like the glimmer of cold steel. It wounded him, yet he was unwilling either to conceal or ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... justify a gesture towards her. It began to work on him. The original clinical urge to touch her just to see what reaction would obtain changed into a personal urge that grew higher as he found that he could not kick the conversational ball in that direction. The idea of putting an arm about her waist as he had seen men embrace their girls on television was a pleasing thought; he wanted to find out if kissing was as much fun as it was made up ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... hulking young man of a rather vacant expression. He is dressed in mechanic's blue dungarees. His face is oily and his clothes stained. He wears boots, not clogs. He mechanically takes a ball of oily black cotton-waste from his right pocket when in conversational difficulties and wipes his hands upon it. He has a red muffler round his neck without collar, and his shock affair hair is surmounted by a greasy black cap, which covers perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... recite in a plain, conversational way some of my personal experiences and individual observations extending over a period of thirty years of public life, during nearly nineteen years of which we have ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... closer and her voice dropped to a conversational tone. "It just isn't in the business, boys. If I promised to pay those wages I couldn't do it. I'd be broke with the first run of bad luck and you know it as well as I do, if you'd stop to think. The man doesn't live who can pay that around here and ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the New Poetry." Within four months of his first contribution Mr. Lehmann was promoted to the Table—an unprecedentedly rapid promotion—and he has ever since been one of the most diligent of contributors. Literary merit apart, Mr. Lehmann's "Conversational Hints for Young Shooters" has probably been received with greater favour throughout the country, on account of its subject and its felicitous treatment, than any of the young author's works. Country readers are essentially sportsmen—in ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... proceed to make a few remarks; from which I trust your Hong Kong correspondent W. T. M. may be able to form "a clear and definite rule," and students of English assisted in their attempts to overcome this formidable conversational "shibboleth." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... concerned. It is true that after supper Beatrice called Matty to her side, and looked over a photographic album with her, and tried hard to draw her into the gay conversation and to get her to reply to the light repartee which Captain Bertram so deftly employed. But, alas for poor Matty she had no conversational powers; she was only great at interjections, at ceaseless giggling, and at violent and uncontrollable fits of blushing. Even Beatrice felt a sense of repulsion at the very open way in which Matty played her innocent cards. Matty was in love, and she showed it by voice, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... that this ship runs on an atomic pile," he said in a conversational tone of voice. "The cables are just under the floor in the control room and they can be reached through a little ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... continued Hamilton, in a conversational tone, "I should think it would be hard for a boy to start in working like ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... her dress; she had the peculiar manner of one who had enjoyed social consideration; and her language indicated familiarity with cultivated society; yet the anxious expression habitual to her countenance, and the bustling air of her vocation which quickly succeeded conversational repose, hinted but too plainly straitened circumstances and daily toil. But what struck her present curious visitor more than these casual traits were the remains of great beauty in the still lovely contour of the face, the refined lines of her mouth, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... compartment in company with a very ugly but very agreeable Tuscan "gent," who said "gia" instead of "si," and rung some other changes in this changing language, but with whom I got on very well, being extremely conversational. We were bound, as you know perhaps, for Piacenza, but it was discovered that we couldn't get to Piacenza, and about ten o'clock at night we halted at a place called Stradella, where the inn was a series of queer galleries ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Geniality. Conversational powers. Gentleness. Kindness to wounded French officer. Advice to young officers. An eager student. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... learned that Bonaparte had conversed a good deal with Bernadotte, and that he had made every effort to render himself agreeable, which he very well knew how to do when he chose! but that, in spite of all his conversational talent; and supported as he was by the presence of his three brothers, and Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely, he could not withstand the republican firmness of Bernadotte. However, the number of his partisans daily augmented; for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised "till they was all froggies, only one was deaded." He showed the place where he had cut his finger in the mower-lawn. He explained how fond he ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... circle—the fight had begun. Even now she awoke sometimes at night with a shudder, having lived again in vivid dream that August afternoon in Newport Harbor, when she sat at her tea table facing the first ordeal. She had come through it. With what rare felicity had she scattered her conversational charms; with what skill had she played upon the pet failings and foibles of her guests; what unerring judgment had been hers, and memory of details, unfailing tact, and exquisite taste! A triumph, yes. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Conge."—In taking leave, it is well not to wait until one has exhausted the conversational gamut, and "that awful pause" in which neither seems to have anything to say, occurs. And having risen, do not "stand upon the order of your going;" do not linger for last words, or begin a fresh topic at the door, keeping your ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... mingling in the responses. Lip service! Let those who would substitute their own crude impulses for the sublime rites of our liturgy, making ill digested forms the supplanter of a ritual carefully and devoutly prepared, listen to one of their own semi-conversational addresses to the Almighty over a grave, and then hearken to these venerable rites, and learn humility. Such men never approach sublimity, or the sacred character that should be impressed on a funeral ceremony, except when they borrow a fragment here and there from ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the open door of the room. 'I was wondering—' he began; then stopped as he saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly. 'Whose is the revolver, Mr Trent?' he asked in a conversational tone. ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Ann Eliza reflected, the steak would be cut and wrapped up, and no choice left her but to turn her disappointed steps toward home. She was too shy to try to delay the butcher by such conversational arts as she possessed, but the approach of a deaf old lady in an antiquated bonnet and mantle gave her ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... all the world like a bottle of his native wine in its straw sheath. Conversation between the two was out of the question, for the guide spoke no English and the lieutenant's knowledge of Portuguese was very far from conversational. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... of make-believe with "Miss Good," for she rigidly held him to his promise, and however adroitly he undertook to ascertain who or what she was, she foiled him. It gave her a mischievous pleasure to evade his carefully laid conversational traps, and what little he learned came from Ma Briskow. Briefly, it amounted to this: Miss Good was what the elder woman called "home folks," but she had been schooled in the East. Moreover, she was ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... often no sound could be heard but the noise of their hoofs. Of the number and kind of these hobbies there is no need here to speak, but when there were so many gathered into a single place, the neighing and snorting, the champing of conversational bits, and the pounding of huge and heavy feet were curious to behold ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... correspondent suggests, by the Book of Esther which might form part of The Alf Laylah. "On that night (we read in Chap. vi. 1) could not the King sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the King." The Rawi would declaim the recitative somewhat in conversational style; he would intone the Saj'a or prose-rhyme and he would chant to the twanging of the Rabab, a one-stringed viol, the poetical parts. Dr. Scott[FN301] borrows from the historian of Aleppo a life-like picture of the Story-teller. "He recites walking to and fro in the middle of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the part of Joseph Surface, in our representation of 'The School for Scandal,' was an unmarried gentleman of high standing, socially and politically, of middle age, fine presence, and superior abilities. Under polished manners and captivating conversational powers, were concealed persistent passions and a conscience of marble. Before even Evelyn suspected it, I was aware that he had resolved on subduing her to his own designs, for I seemed in all things relating to her to be gifted with ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the Examiner was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest the superfluity of complicating ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... without demanding what species of conversational significance her mistress attached to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... it endeavored to pour in increasing quantity into the nursery. Miss More had started the stream of goody-goody books, while Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Barbauld, and Thomas Day were the originators of the deluge of conversational bores, babies, boys, and teachers that threatened to flood the family book-shelves of America when the American writers for children came upon ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... temper, and perhaps the influence lasted into later years. I have, however, heard her lecture. She was a very clever woman, and Mr. Henry James, in Temple Bar for March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational power: ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in the rivers—just as a visitor at home would talk about the effect of the strikes on the stock market, and the prospects of the newest organization of the non-voting classes for the overthrow of Tammany Hall. Every phase of civilisation or barbarism creates its own conversational currency. The weather, like the old Spanish dollar, is the ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... in the conversational mood. He was probably thinking of the girl he loved—in all likelihood of Teresina, as Beatrice thought. She stood still a couple of paces from him and looked at the sea. She felt a capricious desire to make the big sailor talk ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... informing as we find Plautus and Terence, and as we should have found the New Comedy which they copied, leaves us a little cold from the looseness or the connexion in the quasi-narrative: we rise a little unsatisfied from the ingenious banquet of conversational scraps; we desire more. Overbury, again, says less than Earle, and is more artificial in saying it. Butler and Bishop Hall too directly suggest the essay[AG] and the sermon. In no one of them is brevity so obviously the soul of wit as it is in Earle; no one of them ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... peered down at him. The shade of a striped awning protected the window from the strong sun and the maidens from the sight of man—the latter protection being especially fortunate, since they were preparing to take a conversational afternoon nap, were robed with little substance, and their heads appeared to be antlered; for they caught sight of Noble just as they were preparing to put silk-and-lace things they called "caps" on ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... been the usual custom of English judges of courts of last resort to write out their opinions. They have commonly pronounced them orally and left it to the reporters to put them in shape. The consequence has been that English reports have a conversational tone, and are not free from useless repetition. This has been not only a matter of tradition but of necessity. The English judges have always been few in number. Their time has been largely occupied ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... God's sake," said Nan, in a conversational tone, knowing the adjuration would be bitter to him, "if I wanted to be with him, as you put it—I'm glad I ain't a poet—why didn't you ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... that in the course of time Gertrude grew a little tired of Paul's ceaseless devotion. It is quite likely that she sometimes found him in the way, and she was deprived of her best conversational theme. It was of no use to try to revive the legend of the Isolated Soul any longer, because of the frequent and earnest confession which had been made of the final discovery of a spiritual rapport absolute and complete. Paul and his angel had lived on terms of so much intimacy that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and quickly lay down his fork. She watched in vain through the rest of that dinner for a conversational sensation at his end of the table. When they were in the carriage and on the way ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... new, and the other a revised edition. No one has done more than he to popularize the study of words, which is only another name for the study of thought. His new book has the same agreeable qualities which marked its forerunners, maintaining an easy conversational level of scholarly gossip and reflection, the middle ground between learning and information for the million. Without great philological attainments, and without any pretence of such, he gives the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... asleep that night to the placid monotone of the newcomer's voice, and awoke at daybreak to hear the same conversational flow just outside the tent. Perhaps it was Dysart's explosive "Good-morning, professor!" which seemed to have missed the trumpet and hurled itself against the canvas wall of the tent close to the sleeper's ear, that awoke him. He sat ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... takes French or German because he wants enough mastery of these languages to enable him to read in foreign journals about the progress of his specialty must be given a course which appeals to the eye and minimizes the grammatical and conversational phases of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... his colleague. He is, in short, the vigorous, racy prosateur of that human comedy of which Mr. Abbey is the poet. He illustrates the modern sketch of travel, the modern tale—the poor little "quiet," psychological, conversational modern tale, which I often think the artist invited to represent it to the eye must hate, unless he be a very intelligent master, little, on a superficial view, would there appear to be in it to represent. The superficial view is, after all, the natural one for the picture-maker. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... dinner lies in the selection of the guests, with regard to their congeniality to each other, and their conversational powers and varying attainments. It is better to have a few at a time, perhaps eight, as a larger ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... themes and spirited eloquence find spontaneous and unaffected expression through the same medium as might be employed in a deliberate definition of the nature of poetry. The various sets of lectures are pitched in the same conversational key and are found adequate to conveying a notion of the grandeur of Milton as well as of the familiarity ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the suggestion, Anna Sergyevna, and for your flattering opinion of my conversational talents. But I think I have already been moving too long in a sphere which is not my own. Flying fishes can hold out for a time in the air; but soon they must splash back into the water; allow me, too, to ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... At a conversational meeting of the Mechanics' Institute, Professor J. J. Mapes being present, a question was asked if any one present could give information relative to portraiture from life by the Daguerreotype. Mr. Kells, a friend of ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... answer. She was comparing Robert Fenley's conversational style with John Trenholme's, and the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... I saw a very tall and heavy gentleman, dressed in black, who sat, wholly at ease, on the table! One hand was in his pocket, one foot swung clear of the ground; and he was not preaching, but talking in an easy, conversational tone to some forty young men who sat intent on his words. I was too excited to listen to what he was saying, I was making a vain attempt to classify him. But I remember the thought, for it struck me with force,—that if Christianity were so ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... many years he had been leading a healthy human life, living constantly in the open air, walking every day for eight or nine hours, eating sparingly, accepting every conversational opportunity, not even disdaining the discussion of possible work. And beyond mending a hole in his coat that he had made while negotiating barbed wire, with a borrowed needle and thread in a lodging house, he had done no ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... except in one flagrant case, because I suspect that Kingston may have been experimenting in some way. On the other hand it may be that he had contracted to write a book of so many pages, and this was a way of condensing a long conversational exchange. ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them. Shortly after the Buddha's time the Brahmins had their s[u]tras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into P[a]li. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nik[a]yas, or "collections." These cannot have reached their final form till ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... having quite forgotten what he had said to provoke this comment now, looked puzzled and answered nothing: for he had this trait also in common with the sort of Englishman for whom he was taken, that he never helped out your conversational venture, but if he failed to respond inwardly, left you with your unaccepted remark upon your hands, as it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very evil thoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally look like a blundering attack upon him. But just ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... heard him in those days say that his speaking then was very much what it was afterward in Parliament—a kind of conversational eloquence, simple, clear, and strong, without rhetorical flights, but strangely persuasive. One gentleman who was in Parliament with him mentioned that he disliked to see him get up to speak, because he was sure that Cobden ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... in short, is to suppose that the particular power of talk Coleridge had was a nuance or modification of what is meant by conversational power; whereas it was the direct antithesis: it differed diametrically. So much as he had of his own peculiar power, so much more alien and remote was he from colloquial power. This remark should ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... was to talk the thing over first. Allus talk the matter well over, was my motto as a boy. It saves a peck o' bother and a deal o' doing. Don't flare out about it, but take it gently and conversational." ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... and sailor, too"—not being there for conversational purposes, continued his slow pacing, his rifle resting over ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... "Indeed indeed. My goodness." He opened his mouth some more but no words came out of it. "Eee," he said again, at last, in a conversational tone. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Scotsman and the Irishman," began the Skeptic, in a conversational tone, "being about to be hanged, were given their choice of a tree. 'The oak for me,' says the Englishman. 'The Scotch elm for mine,' says the Scotsman. 'Faith,' says the Irishman, 'I'll be afther takin' a gooseberry bush.' 'That's too small,' says the hangman. 'I'll wait for it to grow,' ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... ladies, conscious of conversational defects, and desirous of shining in Society, may be expected to imitate their American Cousins, who, according to The Daily News, employ a lady crammer who has made a study of the subject she teaches. Before a dinner ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... the beholder like an unexpected drawing out of a jewelled sword. Such a type could have sprung only from high Latin ancestry on the one side and—we might venture—Jaloff African on the other. To these charms of person she added mental acuteness, conversational adroitness, concealed cunning, and noiseless but visible strength of will; and to these, that rarest of gifts in one of her tincture, the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... remarked Sancho, in a mild and conversational tone, sitting up and touching one paw to his head, as if he saluted by taking off his hat. Thorny laughed in spite of himself, and Miss Celia seeing that the ice was broken, wheeled him to his place at the foot of the table. Then, seating the little ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... and unrimed, is the most flexible and best adapted to all kinds of subjects that English versification possesses. Its powers range through the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, the dignity of the sonnet, and the grandeur of Milton, to the satire of Pope and the informal conversational verse of Mr. Robert Frost. The 4-stress line is too short, the 6-stress is too long (when it does not split into two equal parts); the 5-stress seems to hit the golden average. It is less inclined to 'go' by itself, and therefore is suitable ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... happens it," inquired Grandfather, "that there is no record nor tradition of your conversational abilities? It is an uncommon thing to meet with ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were happening at Vivey, the person whose name excited the curiosity and the conversational powers of the villagers—Marie-Julien de Buxieres—ensconced in his unpretentious apartment in the Rue Stanislaus, Nancy, still pondered over the astonishing news contained in the Auberive notary's first ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... Here are examples of conversational or descriptive art which, in a large and mixed society, would, even if possible, be hardly so much as perceptible. I may take as two other examples Sophy, Lady Roden, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. Unlike Lady Dorothy, whose chronicled sayings have ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... dealt with from the viewpoint of the pupil rather than from that of the teacher or the scientist. The style is simple, clear, and conversational, yet the method is distinctly scientific, and the book has a cultural as well ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... her, came to join the group, and Lucien soon became the hero of the circle. The Countess drew him out on the subject of life in Paris; his satirical talk flowed with spontaneous and incredible spirit; he told anecdotes of celebrities, those conversational luxuries which the provincial devours with such avidity. His wit was as much admired as his good looks. And Mme. la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, preparing Lucien's triumph so patiently, sat like a player enraptured with the sound of his instrument; she gave him opportunities for a ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... her head quickly, gave a swift look of recognition, a brief smile of gratitude, and continued her pace. She had not taken his arm, but had grasped the handle of the umbrella, which linked them together. Not a word was spoken. Two people cannot be conversational or sentimental flying at the top of their speed beneath a single umbrella, with a crowd of impatient passengers watching and waiting for them. And I grieve to say that, being a happy American crowd, there was some irreverent humor. "Go ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Erskine are said to have been the vainest men of their time. At a dinner some years since, Dr. Parr, in ecstasies with the conversational powers of Lord Erskine, called out to him, though his junior, "My Lord, I mean to write your epitaph." "Dr. Parr," replied the noble lawyer, "it is ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Mary. "The Tower makes it rather unusual and picturesque." This was not really her sincere opinion; she was playing up to Beaumaroy, convinced that he had opened some conversational maneuver. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... you were able to lay your hand on forty-two shillings. Judging from your conversational style, I should think you must spend at least a shilling a week ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... Despite Mr. Free's conversational gifts, however, his audience one by one dropped off in sleep, leaving him sole monarch of the watch-fire, and—what he thought more of—a small brass kettle nearly full of brandy-and-water. This latter, I perceived, he produced when all was tranquil, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... portrait is here drawn of truly rounded, symmetrically developed Christian womanhood, and true ladyship is here pencilled in the diary of the departed. There are some women who win men toward them by their wonderful conversational powers. They can talk by the hour; but when you approach them on the question of finance, for the cause of Home or Foreign Missions, they are like the colored man who was a great talker and a lusty singer, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... spoken in a quiet, conversational tone, noting that Allison had closely eyed the heavy folds of the portiere, and once, stepping quickly thither, had drawn it aside and glanced about him; but the tutor had vanished, if that was what he was looking for. When Forrest stopped, Sloan ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... mean that blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the conversational tone of one who but passed the time ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... discharged; for one day the cashier came out of his private office and intimated that if we valued our situations the subject of hanging would afford us the means of retaining them. He added that he always selected his subordinates with an eye to their conversational abilities, but variety of subject was as desirable, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... what I said, but after mentioning several names, I said that the greatest natural genius and artistic force was probably Walt Whitman. The printed interview is more precise; and students of my literary and conversational style will be interested to know that I said, 'See here, Walt Whitman was your one real red-blooded man.' Here again I hardly think the translation can have been quite unconscious; most of my intimates are indeed aware that I do not talk like that, but I fancy that the same fact ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... her and relapsed into Shakespeare's tongue, for their Italian, though firm and perfect as far as it went, could not be considered as going far, and was useless for conversational purposes, unless they merely wanted to greet each other, or to know the time. But it was interesting to talk Italian, however little ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... debate, attested the rapidity with which his mind operates and his skill in catching the points suggested. There was far less of the dogmatic doctrinaire in his attitude than had been looked for. Occasionally his remarks bordered upon the sententious, but he never "orated," invariably using a conversational tone; many of his points were driven home by humorous allusions or anecdotes rather than by didactic logic. Like that of the other delegates his manner was informal. During the cold days of late January he walked about the room during discussions in order ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... his conversation in that way," laughed Evgenie Pavlovitch. "He borrows whole phrases from the reviews. I have long had the pleasure of knowing both Nicholai Ardalionovitch and his conversational methods, but this time he was not repeating something he had read; he was alluding, no doubt, to my yellow waggonette, which has, or had, red wheels. But I have exchanged it, so you are rather ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... more to be wondered at that a cat, which is such a master of this conversational sort of music, should ever attempt any other. There never was an animal less fit to be a singer. Someone—was it Cowper?—-has said that there are no really ugly voices in nature, and that he could imagine that there was something to be said even for the donkey's ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Johnson that she was almost entirely confined to the society of children, she really did see much of the family, often taking part in their amusements. Judging from the attractions and conversational powers which made her a favorite in London society, it is but natural to conclude that she was an addition to the household. She seems at times to have exerted herself to be agreeable. Godwin records the extreme discomfiture of a fine lady ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... egoism of the occupant of a sick bed, upon his "regal solitude," and goes on to show "how convalescence shrinks a man back to his primitive state." The essay was inspired by that ill-health which led to Lamb's retirement from the India House in 1825. At the close he indulged his pen in his conversational fondness for ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... politics, 'I gather,' he said, with his air of amiable boredom, 'that you were discussing what used in the days of my youth to be called a lady's "conversational powers."' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Tom's conversational powers were never very brilliant, and when in the subduing presence of his father they always dwindled down to nothing. It was, therefore, somewhat difficult, under the circumstances, to keep the talk going, but the Doctor did his best. Tom answered ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed |
